Дэвид Маккалоу: Жизнь и творчество выдающегося историка

American historian and author (1933–2022)

After the success of The Johnstown Flood, two new publishers offered him contracts, one to write about the Great Chicago Fire and another about the San Francisco earthquake. Simon & Schuster, publisher of his first book, also offered McCullough a contract to write a second book. the Samuel Eliot Morison Award, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Cornelius Ryan Award. Later in 1977, McCullough travelled to the White House to advise Jimmy Carter and the United States Senate on the Torrijos Carter Treaties, which would give Panama control of the Canal. The work ranged from Roosevelt's childhood to 1886, and tells of a "life intensely lived." and his first Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography and New York Public Library Literary Lion Award. Next, he published Brave Companions, a collection of essays that "unfold seamlessly". Written over twenty years, the book includes essays about Louis Agassiz, Alexander von Humboldt, John and Washington Roebling, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Conrad Richter, and Frederic Remington. and his second Francis Parkman Prize. Two years later, the book was adapted as Truman (1995), a television film by HBO, starring Gary Sinise as Truman. McCullough published John Adams (2001), his third biography about a United States president. One of the fastest selling non fiction books in history, HBO adapted John Adams as a seven part miniseries by the same name. The DVD version of the miniseries includes the biographical documentary, David McCullough: Painting with Words. McCullough's 1776 tells the story of the founding year of the United States, focusing on George Washington, the amateur Continental Army, and other struggles for independence. McCullough considered writing a sequel to 1776. The book covers 19th century Americans, including Mark Twain and Samuel Morse, who migrated to Paris and went on to achieve importance in culture or innovation. Other subjects include Benjamin Silliman, who had been Morse's science teacher at Yale, Elihu Washburne, the U. S. Ambassador to France during the Franco Prussian War, and Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in the United States. McCullough's The Wright Brothers was published in 2015. The Pioneers followed in 2019, the story of the first European American settlers of the Northwest Territory, a vast American wilderness to which the Ohio River was the gateway.

In 1954, McCullough married Rosalee Barnes; the couple had first met as teenagers, and they remained together until her death on June 9, 2022. They had five children, nineteen grandchildren and two great grandchildren. In 2016, the couple moved from the Back Bay of Boston to Hingham, Massachusetts; three of his five children also lived there as of 2017. He had a summer home in Camden, Maine. McCullough's interests included sports, history, and visual art, including watercolor and portrait painting. His son, David Jr., an English teacher at Wellesley High School in the Boston suburbs, achieved sudden fame in 2012, when he gave a commencement speech in which he repeatedly told graduating students that they were "not special"; his speech went viral on YouTube. Another son, Bill, is married to the daughter of former Florida governor Bob Graham. A registered independent, McCullough typically avoided publicly commenting on contemporary political issues. When asked to do so, he would repeatedly say, "My specialty is dead politicians." During the 2016 presidential election season, he broke with his custom to criticize Donald Trump, whom he called "a monstrous clown with a monstrous ego." After a period of failing health, McCullough died at his home in Hingham on August 7, 2022, at age 89.

McCullough received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in December 2006, the highest civilian award that a United States citizen can receive. McCullough was awarded more than 40 honorary degrees, including one from the Eastern Nazarene College in John Adams' hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts. McCullough received two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, two Francis Parkman Prizes, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, New York Public Library's Literary Lion Award, and the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates, among others. McCullough was chosen to deliver the first annual John Hersey Lecture at Yale University on March 22, 1993. He was a member of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the Academy of Achievement. In 2003, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected McCullough for the Jefferson Lecture, the U. S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. McCullough's lecture was titled "The Course of Human Events". In 1995, McCullough received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The Helmerich Award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust. McCullough was referred to as a "master of the art of narrative history." The New York Times critic John Leonard wrote that McCullough was "incapable of writing a page of bad prose." His works have been published in ten languages, over nine million copies have been printed, and all of his books are still in print. In a ceremony at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, on November 16, 2015, the Air University of the United States Air Force awarded McCullough an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degree. He was also made an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa at Yale University in 2015. On May 11, 2016, McCullough received the United States Capitol Historical Society's Freedom Award. It was presented in the National Statuary Hall. In September 2016, McCullough received the Gerry Lenfest Spirit of the American Revolution Award from the Museum of the American Revolution. In 2017, McCullough was inducted into the DC Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) and received the National Society SAR Good Citizenship Award.

McCullough narrated many television shows and documentaries throughout his career. In addition to narrating the 2003 film Seabiscuit, McCullough hosted PBS's American Experience from 1988 to 1999. The Statue of Liberty, and The Congress. He served as a guest narrator for The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, a Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert special that aired on PBS in 2010. McCullough narrated, in whole or in part, numerous of his own audiobooks, including Truman, 1776, The Greater Journey, and The Wright Brothers.